Tim Denoncour, 26, and Ian Hancock, 25, were preparing their skis at the base of Mount Washington to spend the day avalanche training. Both used to cold weather, they seemed relatively unfazed at the prospect of being on the mountain in the deep freeze.
Mr. Denoncour said he knows it is cold “when I can’t feel my face after five minutes.”
But as eye-popping as the wind chill and “real feel” temperatures may be, scientists say they are an imperfect way to measure the cold.
The concept of wind chill traces back to Antarctica, where two scientists, Paul Siple and Charles Passel, came up with a way of measuring how wind affects cold. Their simple experiment in the 1940s involved hanging plastic bottles of water in the wind to see how quickly they froze. From that, they extrapolated the relationship between cold and wind that suggests what it feels like outside, and the likely effect on exposed skin, that make for the highlight of so many winter weather forecasts.
But the use of wind chill as a way to measure cold is problematic — especially in places like Mount Washington, which is known for its extreme environment, said Greg Carbin, chief of the forecast operations branch for the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.
“A lot of people aren’t going to be exposed to the extreme wind,” he said. “Who’s going to be out walking in an 80-mile-per-hour wind?”
Still, he said this winter’s temperatures have been “very, very unusual.”
“Chicago has felt more like Bismarck, and New York City has felt more like Anchorage,” he said. “From Minnesota to Massachusetts, it’s been brutally cold over the last week, and it will continue into next week before we see a change,” he said.
But behind it, he predicted, would come relief. “The thaw is coming,” he said. “We just have to hold out for about another week.”
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